A standard door is formed by a core plate, an annular frame formed by side and end members surrounding the core plate, a pair of face panels secured to opposite faces of the core formed by the core plate and frame, and decor sheets covering outside faces of the face panels. The core can be made of plywood, chipboard, a rigid gridwork of wooden or paper elements, or the like. The frame is typically made of rectangular-section wooden elements that allow the door to be trimmed, fitted, and mounted using conventional tools and fasteners. The panels are typically pressed board, thin plywood, or another material having high impact resistance. The cover sheets can be wood veneer in a high-quality door or a plastic laminate for a more durable and inexpensive door.
Although it is known to make such doors in a wholly automatic operation, the equipment is so large and complex that it can normally only produce doors of a few different sizes. Changeover from one door size to another is an extremely difficult and time-consuming task so that such an installation is normally devoted to a single standard-size door.
On the other hand production of doors with off sizes or particular characteristics is normally done in a wholly manual system. Thus the various parts are put together by hand and fed manually to a final press where they are all assembled together. Thus such doors are fairly expensive, especially as compared to the low cost of the doors made wholly automatically.